The first day of SXSW was largely dedicated to picking of your badge (and getting a picture taken for it) and picking up your bag o’ schwag. The act of getting the badge involved standing in a HUGE line, riding up two escalators, standing in another line, getting my picture taken, and then waiting in a mob to hear someone call out my name. Then I had to go to another line to get my “big bag” (mostly advertisements). Once I got my badge, my friend and I looked up where we needed to go to find one of the two panels that was offered for the day (it was the panel on “Snakes on a Plane”). I believe the room numbers was 10ABCD. We dug around in the Official SXSW Program and eventually found a map (it was challenging– the advertisement to content ratio was pretty damn outrageous). We finally found the room where the panel was supposed to be and found that it was dead empty which, given the hordes of geeks at the Austin Convention Center, seemed suspicious. So, we hoofed back to the mail area.
The next logical step seemed to be to find a SXSW employee (there were a bunch of “volunteers” – I don’t know exactly why they’d volunteer). I approached a table marked information, where there were 4 people helping a single attendee. Well, to be honest, it was 1 person helping a single attendee which the three others watched with interest. I stood there expecting one of them to break away to see what I needed, but they never did. I was eventually told that the panel had moved to a different room than the one on the printed schedule that we had. Odd that they hadn’t bothered to put a note on the door. We finally made it to the panel (a bit late).
On any other day, it would have been an annoying way to spend an afternoon. As a guy who tends to be a bit of a usability zealot, inefficiencies and sloppy systems tend to really set me off. But the energy of the conference was overwhelming. I was thrilled to just be there and too excited about the coming days to get bitchy about the low level of service that I’d experienced.
That night I tried to get a full night’s sleep. Unfortunately, I’d just gotten back from a long vacation in New Zealand, so my internal clock was off by 6 hours… not just the three it normally would have been coming from Seattle. I slept terribly, woke up late, and rushed out the door.
And I forgot my badge.
After breakfast and coffee downtown, we headed to the convention center. I was confident they wouldn’t turn me away without a badge. After all, they’d made me wait 45 minutes the day before just so they could get my picture– they KNEW what I looked like. I’d registered early, so my name was certainly on file. And I had a pile of photo identification to choose from. But, turn me away they did.
I was pleasant. I owned up to the fact that it was MY fault. I mentioned the fact that I had just gotten back from New Zealand and was really hurting for sleep (true). I mentioned the fact that the hotel that my company had booked was 20 minutes and a $25 cab ride ($50 round trip) away from downtown (true). I expressed concern over missing the first panel session.
None of it phased the (bored looking) registration “volunteer”. “You’re out $350 [the cost of the conference] if you can’t find it.”
On the cab ride back to the hotel, the previous day all came back to me. All of the petty annoyances that I had happily forgiven started REALLY pissing me off. And, quite honestly, I was pretty slow to forgive SXSW for continued inefficiencies and annoyances throughout the rest of the conference. I still had a good time and I still learned a lot. But, like a powerful web site that has a crappy UI, it really tarnished the experience.
As I reflect on this experience, I think it really generalizes to a lot of aspects of software development and customer service. The cost of forgiveness is often very low, and a touch of forgiveness towards your users can go a long damn way.
